The Splendor Falls
by the.goal.is.greatness
Summary: [Companion to And Then Came Love] Heart isn't something inside of you. Whenever you think, whenever you remember someone, that's when heart is born. If you were the only person alive in the whole world, heart wouldn't exist, now would it? [Jack x Ianto]


**Title:** The Splendor Falls  
**Genre:** Romance / Angst  
**Rating:** M  
**Pairing:** Jack x Ianto  
**Spoilers:** N/A  
**Summary:** Heart isn't something inside of you. Whenever you think, whenever you remember someone, that's when heart is born. If you were the only person alive in the whole world, heart wouldn't exist, now would it?  
**Word Count:** 783  
**Warnings:** N/A

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Summary is from Bleach.

**A/N:** Future!verse

* * *

While you are living in the moment, time seems like such an inconsequential thing. _One more minute. I'll see you in a few hours. Let's go out next week. That movie comes out next year._ You say the words but they don't _mean_ anything, not until you sit down and think about them.

How many times have you said "That movie comes out next year?" Five? Ten? Twenty? That's years, lifetimes, in a single phrase, and you don't even realize. But Jack does. He realizes it every waking moment and it _hurts_. Fuck, it hurts.

Jack feels life pass by as slowly as the universe turns. So slowly you don't even realize, but when you track it, it is monumental in scale. At times in his long, long life he has waited for many things. He's waited for The Doctor, waited to hear the Tardis and waited to see those faces that had left him behind. He's waited to come back to Torchwood, wallowing in self-pity, but always returning. He's waited for lots of things.

But there's a difference between waiting for something that you know is or might be coming, and waiting for something that you will never see again.

Jack didn't know how long it would take, but he knew he'd see The Doctor again. The Doctor might have a new face, a new companion, a new Tardis, but he would still be The Doctor. He would be there, and Jack's waiting would not have been in vain.

But now… now that is many, many years ago. The Doctor came. And went. And came. And went. Many times. It has been a long time since Jack has seen him, but he knows that they will meet each other again. For Jack is as timeless as The Doctor. Sometimes Jack thinks that, eventually, they will be the only two beings left in the universe. And won't that be lonely?

Sometimes, even surrounded by people, it feels like Jack is alone. He isn't waiting for anything. There is nothing really before his horizon. He exists. Things happen. People come and go. But he is not waiting. The only person he wants to see has been dead and gone for more years than Jack can even count. In his life he has flirted with, slept with, even loved many people. All different, all unique to him.

But Ianto…

Ah, sometimes Jack gave his heart to someone, but always he held a little back. Many of them, most of them, never knew precisely what he was. Some did, but were too dangerous to risk his entire heart with. Some gave their hearts to Jack, but he couldn't return the favor. Ianto was the only one who knew Jack, _knew him_, even without knowing his life story. Ianto understood him, so well that Jack didn't think he even realized how well he knew him. Ianto was the only one who gave his whole heart to Jack… and Jack gave his whole heart back.

And now, it is been eons, but he still holds that heart close to his chest at night, remembering everything about it that he loved so much.

Those eyes. That voice. God that _voice_. Jack could go from six to midnight in two seconds flat just from hearing his name in that thick, slurring accent. He ached to hear it, heavy with desire, words so accented you couldn't understand anything except for "please, yes, yes, please, oh God." Jack has spent entire lifetimes trying to find pieces of Ianto in other people. This one has his hands, that one his smile, another his laugh. But that voice was Ianto's alone and eventually Jack stopped looking and just remembered.

He remembered giving his heart away to a boy, a man, in Cardiff and never asking for it, never wanting it back. He can feel the sinew across the centuries that tie him to that moment, even here, light-years away, forever binding them together.

Because it's not that Jack is heartless, like his lovers say today, oh no.

It is just that Jack is living in a galaxy far from Earth too far in the future to fathom and his heart – well his heart is forever trapped in Cardiff, in the early 21st Century. And he'll never get it back.


End file.
